How LinkedIn can help you source talent

How LinkedIn can help you source talent

LinkedIn is the best tool to either find a new professional level job, or to source candidates for a position your company needs to fill.

More effective than a paper CV, LinkedIn allows you to get a sense of the person you want to hire – such as attention to detail (spelling errors, syntax), effective networking, recommendations etc.

But there is more than the obvious benefits that we all see on LinkedIn, especially for companies that need to build a talent pipeline.

Talent Knows Talent

One of the frequent reasons for people connecting with other people, and the primary reason for most people following a company page on LinkedIn, is to begin to learn about a company that they would like to work for.

The average LinkedIn user follows 6 company pages, so there is a good chance that a person following your company page may want to work for you.

LinkedIn solutions

You can of course post jobs on your website, and then feed the URL to your Company Page as well as the various staff profiles. You can also post jobs for free in many groups – as long as they are relevant and this action complies with the group rules.

To maximize the opportunities on LinkedIn, explore their paid options. Dell is a good example of how this works.

If you go to any regular company page, you will see regular adverts posted in the right hand column. They will appear based on the interests and key words that you have used in your profile.

But when you visit a company like Dell, you will see that they have taken advantage of the virtual real estate around their company page to the fullest extent.

Primarily they personalise the adverts by taking the details if the user and placing them in the company adverts. “Can you image working for this company? Would you like your profile to look like this, with this company as your employer?”

When visiting Dell you will see Dell product adverts and Dell job adverts. When visiting any employee who works at Dell, you will see an advert at the top next to his name, inviting you to explore why working at Dell would be a good idea for you.

This is obviously a paid solution, but for a company like Dell who needs to source great staff on an ongoing basis, this is very cost effective. It means that people who are checking out others like themselves, will see that they work at a great company and be invited to opt into this process and self-qualifying for existing roles, rather than the Recruitment department having to find job seekers and qualify out those who just do not fit the required profile.

This type of approach also works well for those who are not active job seekers – it allows the casual LinkedIn user to explore job opportunities for which they were not actively seeking.

And it also works well for larger companies who need to advertise internal positions to their own staff members.

Action

If your company is often looking for new staff, then ensure that you share something about your company culture, open positions and testimonials from existing staff, on your Company page.

Encourage your existing staff following that page, to Comment, Like and preferably Share the Company posts to their own network.

You can also encourage your staff to make those weak connections a little stronger, by finding out if their connections are interested in the company they work for. Let them talk on behalf of the company and be the one who introduces them to the appropriate person to submit their CVs.

If your company is bigger and a strong talent pipeline is needed, then think about creating a Careers page and posting content focussed on that need. And making use of LinkedIn’s paid options to profile your company’s job opportunities in the best light.

You can see on Dell’s Careers Page, testimonials from existing staff, a list of jobs at Dell as well as a Slide Share presentation on Company Culture.

LinkedIn has a solution, at different price ranges, for your talent needs. Don’t miss this opportunity to take advantage of a tool that so many people are already using.